A terrorist linked to the men who killed 12 people in the offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, and suspected of killing a police officer, shot and killed four people, wounded many more and held at least five hostages inside a kosher market in Paris.
Police freed the surviving hostages and killed the gunman, reported to be Amedy Coulibaly. The Charlie Hebdo assailants were killed in a simultaneous raid on a printing business, where they also held a hostage, who was eventually freed.
B’nai B’rith International said that “terrorizing of a kosher market is not just an attack on Jews, but a reprehensible assault on free societies everywhere.”
March against terrorism, Newseum, Washington DC, January 11, 2014. (Photo: Helen Loeb)
The World Jewish Congress president, Ronald S. Lauder, praised the European government leaders for spontaneously traveling to Paris on Sunday to take part in a solidarity march, but urged a strong response from civil society:
We hope that this barbaric attack will trigger the same outcry among citizens in France and the rest of the Western world as did Wednesday’s attack on Charlie Hebdo. France has the world’s third largest Jewish community, and yet Jewish life in France will not have a future if the lethal threat posed by Islamic terrorists is not tackled effectively and quickly.
